ARTURAS KARNISOVAS STOOD on the baseline of the United Center floor, his arms folded as he watched his team warm up for that evening’s game. His 6-foot-8 frame typically towered over the non-players on the floor, but perhaps more so on this day. The Chicago Bulls were at their lowest point of the season on Nov. 30, with a record of 5-14 following a 27-point drubbing by the Boston Celtics.
Aside from the few times the schedule mandates — the beginning and end of the season, and at the trade deadline — Karnisovas, the team’s vice president of basketball operations, rarely makes public comments. But days earlier, Karnisovas had voiced his displeasure during a pregame availability session to a small contingent of local media in Boston.
“We see what everyone is seeing and are just as frustrated. We’re disappointed, but I’m not running from it,” he told the group.
The ensuing blowout loss had only heightened his frustration. Karnisovas had remade the Bulls’ roster in the summer of 2021 and entered this season with optimism Chicago could compete for a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. He had not imagined the Bulls plummeting to the bottom of the standings like this, but he told ESPN before the Nov. 30 game it was time to go into evaluation mode.
Chicago would snap a five-game losing streak with a win in overtime over the Milwaukee Bucks on the 30th, the kind of frisky win that would become routine for them. From that point, the Bulls salvaged their season, going 34-29 (.539).
“After that Boston game, I didn’t even know if we’d have a chance to play after today,” Bulls coach Billy Donovan told reporters in New York before the team’s regular-season finale. “It’s a tribute to what [the players] did.
“I really appreciate what those guys have done because of what we’ve had to endure and what we’ve had to overcome. It’s not where we certainly want to be. But I will say this: It could’ve been a lot worse. And it speaks to the character of those guys in the locker room.”
The turnaround was satisfying enough to Karnisovas. The next time he spoke to the media, following the Feb. 8 trade deadline, he struck a much different tone, proclaiming how proud he was that the Bulls had saved their season. So proud, in fact, that he did not make any moves to alter the roster.
“We would take a step back, which we did not want,” Karnisovas said on a Zoom call that afternoon, explaining the Bulls’ inactivity. “We want to say competitive.”
It was the third consecutive trade deadline in which the Bulls did not make a trade. They are the only team not to make a single trade deadline move over the past three seasons, according to ESPN Stats & Information.
The Bulls won again that night, a 118-110 victory over the Memphis Grizzlies, improving their record to 25-27 through 52 games — the same record they had through 52 games in 2022-23.
